Thursday, September 06, 2007

Free reign

It's so nice when the brains behind the blog are all off busying themselves for the Toronto International Film Festival and us rural bumpkins can just kinda say, "Whu?," as we drag a broom around the empty place and sort of dwell on whatever we fancy and push the accepatable boundaries of run-on sentences while doing it, man. That's nice.

Last weekend while seated even slightly more into 'the sticks' for a spell, we returned to the warm chest of one of our all time favourite screen bounders, George Sanders, and re-watched his near final farewell to celluloid, 1971's Psychomania. I've got a dismal old dupe-y VHS around that was recorded at 24 hour speed but I've been itching to get a nicer copy to revisit so I got this cheap DVD under poor advice only to later find that it has a scene trimmed where our man George is introduced and something else that sounds wonderful also happens but I've forgotten what that one is. So, either we go for a UK cut of the film on DVD or find a special someone who has the nice, widescreen version that is OOP and too much at $100 or so but apparently is fully intact. Such decisions.

If you've never seen the film, I suggest you seek it out and bathe in the remarkably fun nonsense that it is. Basically, due to some family witchcraft history and a particular fondness of frogs, this young chap who is the head boy of a motorcycle gang (they're called 'The Living Dead'!) decides it would be terrific fun to willingly kill themselves in order to come back as indestructible immortals and continue their unique brand of childish mayhem and kill a few people who disapprove and tut tut too! So, they do, damned kids! And it's a joy to behold and there is a rather plaintive (and head-shakingly awesome) song sang at this young man's funeral party where he is in a hole and on his bike in full gear and a ton more of golden moments that make it all so worthwhile and enjoyable if you're in for a goof of a good time. I guarantee your smiles and good times, people.

And Sanders plays a butler and even though he is near his low moment of eventual suicide and acting in dregs clearly beneath him, the man is a true actor and professional to the finish and delivers a fine performance all around. A class act always.

Here is the type of awful, no-good goings on that these young and leathered limeys get up to. For shame!

And here we see the country of origin, UK quad for this treasure of cinema.

"Video killed the spirit and showmanship that movies was all about and turned the mob-mentality of a theatrical screened movie into a solitary, consumer experience that plays into the arrested-development 'collector' mentality of these nerds who just want to 'own' everything that came out in a certain genre and sit there like lumps and fast forward through everything. But they don't own the movies, they just own the bad, shitty little xerox copy." - Jack Stevenson